THE MINISTERIAL PUGILISTS.
Those who read the account of the trial of Rev. Carhart, at Oshkosh, are about as sick of true goodness as men can be. They open the ecclesiastical court by singing “A charge to keep I have,” and then Brother Haddock, after a prayer has been delivered, does not keep his charges, but fires them at the presiding elder. Good old tunes are sung previous to calling witnesses to testify to alleged three carde monte acts of a disciple of Christ. Sanctimonious looking men pray for divine guidance, and then try to prove that a dear brother has bilked another dear brother out of several hundred dollars on Texas lands, and that he tried to trade a wagon at double what it is worth to settle the matter.
They sing, “Take me just as I am,” and then try to prove that the one who made charges against the other is not altogether holy, because he is alleged to have confessed to passing the night in a room with a female church member, in silent devotion, when he swears it is a lie,—that he only laid on a lounge.
Prominent Methodists collect at the bull-fight in Oshkosh, take sides with one or the other, and lay their bottom prayer that their champion will come out on top, with not a stripe polluted nor a star erased:
One side sings, “Jesus caught me when a stranger,” and the other side smiles and winks and whispers that they are glad he was caught.
They sing, “Rock of ages, cleft for me,” and proceed to cleave the rock of each other’s character. They cast one eye heavenward in prayer, while with the other they watch the other side to see that they don’t steal the testimony.
Some one starts “Little drops of water,” and big drops of perspiration appear on truly good foreheads for fear proof will be adduced to show that money has been obtained under false pretenses.
And this goes by the name of religion!
There should be honor among ministers. Both of the principals in this suit should be bounced. If the charges are true, Carhart should emigrate. If they are not true, Haddock should emigrate.
MUSIC ON THE WATERS.
Our readers have no doubt noticed in the papers that the Goodrich Transportation Company had secured a band from Waupun to make music on the boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago this summer. Well, there is trouble going on in consequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich line, entrusted the organization of the band to Mr. Nick Jarvis, of Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation as a scientific pounder of the bass drum has received encomiums from the crowned heads of Oshkosh and Hazen’s cheese factory.
Having such confidence in Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Hurson gave him a roving commission, with authority to secure the best talent in the known world. He organized the band, and then it occurred to Mr. Jarvis that the musicians had always been accustomed to playing on land, and they might be sick on the water, so he took measures to accustom them to a sea-faring life before leaving Waupun. He got them to practicing in a building, and hired some boys to throw water up on the side of the house, to see if they would be seasick. The band fellows would have stood the sea first-rate, only the villains who had been hired to throw the water used a lot of dirty stuff they found back of a hotel, which smelled powerful.
A number of the band members felt the swash of the waves against the bulwarks of the house, and smelled what they supposed to be salt sea air, and they leaned out of the windows and wanted to throw up their situations, but a German in the party had a lemon and some cheese, which was given around to taste and smell, and they came out of it all right.
Mr. Jarvis’ next idea, to accustom the prairie sailors to the vasty deep, was to take them out on the mill pond at Waupun in a skiff. They got out in the middle of the pond, and were playing a selection from the opera of “Solid Muldoon,” when a boy who had slipped into the boat with a fish-pole, got a bite from a bull-head, which caused the vessel to roll, and the utmost confusion prevailed. Ordering the snare drum player to “cut away the main bob-stay, and belay the cornet,” Mr. Jarvis took the bass drum between his teeth and jumped overboard, followed by the band, and they waded ashore.
On Monday last the band arrived in Milwaukee and reported on board the Goodrich steamer, in the river, ready for business. They were told to go as they pleased until evening, when they would be expected to play before the boat started, and also on the trip to Chicago. The men sat around on deck all the afternoon, and smelled of the river. It smelled different from any salt water they ever snuffed, and they wanted to go home.
At seven o’clock the band played a few tunes as the boat lay in the river, and finally she let go her ropes and steamed down toward the lake, the band whooping it up to the “Blue Danube.” As the boat struck blue water, and her bow raised out about sixteen feet and began to jump, the cornet player stopped to pour water out of his horn, and lean against a post. He was as pale as death, and the tuba player stopped to see what ailed the cornet player, and to lean over the railing to see a man down stairs. The baritone had eaten something that did not agree with him, and he stopped playing and laid down in a life boat, the alto became cold around the extremities and quit playing and went to the smoke stack to warm himself, the b-flat began to perspire and quit playing and fanned himself with the cymbals, and all of the horn blowers were e-flat and b-flat on the deck in less than two minutes.
The captain noticed that there was some discrepancy in the music and came on deck to see about it. Wading through the brass horns he came up to where the band had been, and found Nick Jarvis beating blazes out of the bass drum and Harve Hill carving the Blue Danube out of the snare drum, and that was all the music there was. The captain asked Jarvis what kind of a riot that was, and he told him it was the best they could do under the circumstances.
Restoratives were applied to the members, and they braced up enough to start in on “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” but they couldn’t play it through, owing to dyspepsia. The captain got them into the cabin to play for the young folks to dance, but the only thing they could play without getting sick was “Home Again, from a Foreign Shore,” and the bass drum had to do it all. The horn blowers were out looking at the starlight, leaning over the railing, as the stars were reflected in the water.
At Racine it took some time to load, owing to rough water, and in the midst of it all a pale man, with a snare drum on his arm, rolled up against the captain. It was Harve Hill. He held his hand over his mouth and in a voice choked with emotion and fried potatoes he said:
“Captain, I am a poor man, but if you will land this boat and save me, I will give you nine dollars.”
The captain decided to dispense with the music the rest of the night, and let the band get on its sea legs.
At Chicago, the next morning, Jarvis, who had got a little sick, too, tried to induce the captain to allow the band to walk back to Milwaukee on the shore, beside the boat. He said they could play any tune that ever was played, on land, and the passengers could hear it just as well, if the boat kept alongside of the band. The captain wouldn’t let them off, and they have been kept on the boat all the week, so that now they are old sailors, and can play all right. But it was pretty tough the first night. Waupun is organizing a reception for the band when it comes home.
WOMAN-DOZING A DEMOCRAT.
A fearful tale comes to us from Columbus. A party of prominent citizens of that place took a trip to the Dells of Wisconsin one day last week. It was composed of ladies and gentlemen of both political parties, and it was hoped that nothing would occur to mar the pleasure of the excursion.
When the party visited the Dells, Mr. Chapin, a lawyer of Democratic proclivities, went out upon a rock overhanging a precipice, or words to that effect, and he became so absorbed in the beauty of the scene that he did not notice a Republican lady who left the throng and waltzed softly up behind him. She had blood in her eye and gum in her mouth, and she grasped the lawyer, who is a weak man, by the arms, and hissed in his ear:
“Hurrah for Garfield, or I will plunge you headlong into the yawning gulf below!”
It was a trying moment. Chapin rathe
r enjoyed being held by a woman, but not in such a position that, if she let go her hold to spit on her hands, he would go a hundred feet down, and become as flat as the Greenback party, and have to be carried home in a basket.
In a second he thought over all the sins of his past life, which was pretty quick work, as anybody will admit who knows the man. He thought of how he would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all the fellows, if it once got out that he had been frightened into going back on his party.
He made up his mind that he would die before he would hurrah for Garfield, but when the merciless woman pushed him towards the edge of the rock, and said, “Last call! Yell, or down you go!” he opened his mouth and yelled so they heard it in Kilbourn City:
“Hurrah for Garfield! Now lemme go!”
Though endowed with more than ordinary eloquence, no remarks that he had ever made before brought the applause that this did. Everybody yelled, and the woman smiled as pleasantly as though she had not crushed the young life out of her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of his country, but when she had realized what she had done her heart smote her, and she felt bad.
Chapin will never be himself again. From that moment his proud spirit was broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself with a skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is not enough of him left for a quorum.
Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires out of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he either passed or turned it down. He said he couldn’t take a trick. Later on, when the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some of it, and a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting, but his eyes were sot. He said they couldn’t fool him. After what had occurred, he didn’t feel as though any Democrat was safe. He expected to be poisoned on account of his politics, and all he asked was to live to get home.
Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause him to forget the fearful scene through which he had passed. Only once did he partially come to himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and that was when it was found that he had sat down on some raspberry jam with his white pants on. When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said they were all welcome to his share of the jam.
They tried to interest him in conversation by drawing war maps with three-tined forks on the jam, but he never showed that he knew what they were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a brush, made of cauliflower preserved in mustard, and shaded the lines of the war map on Mr. Cha-pin’s trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in the jam. Then his artistic eye took in the incongruity of the colors, and he gasped for breath, and said:
“Moak, that is played out. People will notice it.”
But he relapsed again into semi-unconsciousness, and never spoke again, not a great deal, till he got home.
He has ordered that there be no more borrowing of sugar and drawings of tea back and forth between his house and that of the lady who broke his heart, and he has announced that he will go without saurkraut all winter rather than borrow a machine for cutting cabbage of a woman that would destroy the political prospects of a man who had never done a wrong in his life.
He has written to the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee to suspend judgment on his case, until he can explain how it happened that a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat hurrahed for Garfield.
A LIVELY TRAIN LOAD.
Last week a train load of insane persons were removed from the Oshkosh Asylum to the Madison Asylum. As the train was standing on the sidetrack at Watertown Junction it created considerable curiosity. People who have ever passed Watertown Junction have noticed the fine old gentleman who comes into the car with a large square basket, peddling popcorn. He is one of the most innocent and confiding men in the world. He is honest, and he believes that everybody else is honest.
He came up to the depot with his basket, and seeing the train he asked Pierce, the landlord there, what train it was. Pierce, who is a most diabolical person, told the old gentleman that it was a load of members of the legislature and female lobbyists going to Madison. With that beautiful confidence which the pop corn man has in all persons, he believed the story, and went in the car to sell pop corn.
Stopping at the first seat, where a middle-aged lady was sitting alone, the pop corn man passed out his basket and said, “fresh pop corn.” The lady took her foot down off the stove, looked at the man a moment with eyes glaring and wild, and said, “It is—no, it cannot be—and yet it is me long lost Duke of Oshkosh,” and she grabbed the old man by the necktie with one hand and pulled him down into the seat, and began to mow away corn into her mouth. The pop corn man blushed, looked at the rest of the passengers to see if they were looking, and said, as he replaced the necktie knot from under his left ear and pushed his collar down, “Madame, you are mistaken. I have never been a duke in Oshkosh. I live here at the Junction.” The woman looked at him as though she doubted his statement, but let him go.
He proceeded to the next seat, when a serious looking man rose up and bowed; the pop corn man also bowed and smiled as though he might have met him before. Taking a paper of pop corn and putting it in his coat tail pocket, the serious man said, “I was honestly elected President of the United States in 1876, but was counted out by the vilest conspiracy that ever was concocted on the earth, and I believe you are one of the conspirators,” and he spit on his hands and looked the pop corn man in the eye. The pop corn man said he never took any active part in politics, and had nothing to do with that Hayes business at all. Then the serious man sat down and began eating the pop corn, while two women on the other side of the car helped themselves to the corn in the basket.
The pop corn man held out his hand for the money, when a man two seats back came forward and shook hands with him, saying: “They told me you would not come, but you have come, Daniel, and now we will fight it out. I will take this razor, and you can arm yourself at your leisure.” The man reached into an inside, pocket of his coat, evidently for a razor, when the pop corn man started for the door, his eyes sticking out two inches. Every person he passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket away and as he rushed out on the platform the basket was thrown at his head, and a female voice said, “I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8.”
As the old gentleman struck the platform and began to arrange his toilet he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter. He said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, “but,” says he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of his neck, “if those people are not delegates to a democratic convention, then I have been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing, and don’t know my business.” Fitz told him they were patients going to the Insane Asylum.
The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling pin and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has not been out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent us a runaway horse once.
HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND’S TOOTH.
Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own another dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had been bereaved via dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general. We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we concluded never again to own a dog.
The vow has been religiously kept since. Men have promised us thousands of pups, but we have never taken them. One conductor has promised us at least seventy-five pups, but he has always failed to get us to tak
e one. Dog lovers have set up nights to devise a way to induce us to accept a dog. We held out firmly until last week. One day we met Pierce, the Watertown Junction hotel man, and he told us he had a greyhound pup that was the finest bread dog—we think he said bread dog, though it might have been a sausage dog he said—anyway he told us it was blooded, and that when it grew up to be a man—that is, figuratively speaking—when it grew up to be a dog full size, it would be the handsomest canine in the Northwest.
We kicked on it, entirely, at first, but when he told us hundreds of men who had seen the pup had offered him thousands of dollars for it, but that he had rather give it to a friend than sell it to a stranger; we weakened, and told him to send it in.
Well—(excuse us while we go into a corner and mutter a silent remark)—it came in on the train Monday, and was taken to the barn. It is the confoundedest looking dog that a white man ever set eyes on. It is about the color of putty, and about seven feet long, though it is only six months old. The tail is longer than a whip lash, and when you speak sassy to that dog, the tail will begin to curl around under him, amongst his legs, double around over his neck and back over where the tail originally was hitched to the dog, and then there is tail enough left for four ordinary dogs.
It is the longest tail we have ever seen in one number. If that tail was cut up into ordinary tails, such as common dogs wear, there would be enough for all the dogs in the Seventh ward, with enough left for a white wire clothes line. When he lays down his tail curls up like a coil of telephone wire, and if you take hold of it and wring you can hear the dog at the central office. If that dog is as long in proportion, when he gets his growth, and his tail grows as much as his body does, the dog will reach from here to the Soldier’s home.
His head is about as big as a graham gem, and runs down to a point not bigger than a cambric needle, while his ears are about as big as a thumb to a glove, and they hang down as though the dog didn’t want to hear anything. How a head of that kind can contain brains enough to cause a dog to know enough to go in when it rains is a mystery. But he seems to be intelligent.
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